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Greetings!

How do you feel Summer went for you? 🤔

10th August 2018 overlooking Phoenix, note blue power flash to the side of the bolt. 

As I'm sure you're aware, lightning bolts can display a wide variety of colours ranging from lilac, white and blue, to even more exotic colours like yellow, orange and even green. There are many causes for this wide variety of colours.

A new storm thread for the upcoming week, with a risk tonight (Tuesday) and perhaps thundery showers ongoing most days beyond.

Started this thread as im sick of the heat, fed up of melting everytime i move. Feel free to moan away 😓😁

Well, it's that time of year again, summer is now within touching distance and keeping in line with previous years threads it's now time to get this year's summer thread up and running

If only we could have more days like today in summer!

A look at the official recording of air temperature and surrounding conditions. Hourly official weather observations and the daily NCM National Climatological Message which records max and min temp, sunshine hours, rainfall and visibility.

The noctilucent cloud season is underway, view and post reports and photos here.

The Helm Wind - the only named wind in the UK - amazing what it can do!

What is the worst thunderstorm you have experienced here in the UK? You can judge it anyway you like, the largest hail, the most rain, best lightning displays...

Lightning shots from a storm in Croatia.

Here we go then, already plenty of interest in the strat this year, and with a La Nina likely, perhaps a less hardcore stratosphere than last year can be expected?

SACRA has a new home, and is the first community club on Netweather
For those who don't know, SACRA stands for Snow And Cold Rampers Association, and has been running on the community since 2005.

It seems an age that we have seen a direct long fetch northerly hit the country, whilst they are very often shortlived, sometimes not even 24 hours before high pressure topples in, I can't remember the last one outside of the summer months. None of the last four autumns have produced one, we had one in Oct 2012 that was the last one. Recent winters have been devoid as well. Even recent springs, when northerlies are at their maxim.

Autumn is that time of year where the weather becomes cooler, trees become dazzling displays of vivid colours, nights get longer and mist weaves through the valleys like fluff! But Autumn isn't for everyone and there may be aspects about the season that you love and/or hate. What would you say you like or dislike about Autumn?

The short answer is almost certainly not. But I thought it might be an idea and fun to have a place to put the speculation and "signs" we see that stretch the definition of the term tenuous to put it mildly, and save the model threads and other "serious discussion" threads being clogged up by them! 

Autumn has arrived, how do you expect it to pan out this year? Have you seen any signs of it in nature yet?

 

 

I've started this thread a little earlier than usual, given we are about to see a couple of very chilly nights for the time of year, with potential for grass frost tonight in sheltered parts i.e. a ground frost with mins of 1-3 degrees in frost prone spots, tomorrow night could indeed bring an air frost to sheltered northern parts as well - 0 degrees. Not highly unusual, but not something we tend to see until second half of September.

Please use this thread to record your first occasion of frost this upcoming season, ground and air. 

Here we tend to see out first ground frost last week of September, and air frost third week of October, in an average year. Earliest air frost in recent years was 23 Sept 2012 when we recorded a very cold -3 degrees. Not once in winter 2015/2016 did we see anything colder than -3 degrees!

Yesterday we had Tropical Storm Irma declared and over the last 24 hours or so we have seen steady strengthening such that it now has sustained winds of 70mph and should be declared a hurricane later today.

Eventual track at this stage is unknown (it will barely pass the islands in a week) however the amplitude of a trough over the eastern US at the time appears to be key. If the flow amplifies then Irma gets caught and recurves (threat only to Bermuda and the Outer Banks) however if the flow flattens then ridging is stronger and anything from a Carolina/Florida hit is possible. 

NHC brings it to a category 3 within 5 days.

This mornings Euro at day 6..


*One thing to note is that being a long track system it will probably end up pretty large with a very large hurricane wind radius. If it does make land anywhere, it's something to bear in mind. 

It should be fantastic for our seasonal ACE total though. 

Big problem here is rainfall, Texas is looking at catastrophic flooding from Harvey (will definitely be retired) as the folk of Texas will be measuring their rainfall in feet rather than inches. 

As of the last update, pressure down to 1003mb. 

We've got a couple of new radar apps which are currently in beta that are available to try (they're stable, but may have some bugs and issues within them still, as they are pre-release versions).

As promised, here's a quick rundown of some of the new features on the forum since the update earlier this week.